


All I'd Want You To Know

by DesireeArmfeldt



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, POV Third Person Limited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 09:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12362292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt
Summary: John has a message for Harold.





	All I'd Want You To Know

It’s bad.

John can tell because he’s shivering cold and can’t move. He’s hauled ass with a gut-wound before, but he can’t remember how. Right now it’s taking all he has just to breathe. Each gasp chokes him like he’s breathing in water. Pain is the only thing. He can’t feel it. Can’t feel anything else.

 _Might not be getting up from this one,_ he thinks.

Somewhere above him, at the far end of a tunnel, is a blurry, broad face. _Fusco._ John manages to blink him into slightly better focus. Fusco’s frowning furiously. He’s doing something with his hands that John can’t see. Applying pressure. That’s what you do when someone’s bleeding on the ground.

Fusco’s talking, too. Probably has been for a while. John tries to listen—only polite—but it’s like picking out lyrics from the stereo playing three floors down.

“Hey. Stay with me, Wonderboy. . . .Ambulance is on the way. . . .Anything happens to you, Glasses’ll string me up by my toenails, so you just hang in there, okay?”

He’s right. Harold will be mad if he loses John. . .the whole operation. . .but no, not any more, Harold has Shaw now, for. . .for the Numbers, Samaritan. . .which is a weight off John’s shoulders, except he’s still seeing Harold’s face, struck dumb, struck down. . .no, it’s _John_ who’s struck down, but. . .but Harold. . .Harold will. . .Harold will be hurt, and it’s John’s job to protect him, but he can’t. . .can’t move, can barely muster the spit and the breath to croak out a few words.

“Harold. . .Harold. . .tell him. . .”

“Tell him yourself,” Fusco growls, and then he’s gone and strangers are surrounding John, handling him, lifting him.

 _Harold,_ he tries to say again, but no sound comes out and then he’s gone, too.

 

                        *                                  *                                  *

 

He knows he’s in a hospital before he opens his eyes. The smell, the background noise and also the creepy wrapped-in-cotton contentment of strong painkillers. The drugs mean he doesn’t actually feel the panic that ought to be rising as he realizes that he has no idea who he’s supposed to be right now—but no, Fusco: Fusco brought him in, so he must be Riley.

He drags his gummy eyes open. Yep: hospital. Regular old hospital, from the look of it. Standard tiny little “room” with curtains for walls and the sounds of human activity nearby.

He tries to raise his head but that makes him dizzy. Also, his head is really fucking heavy. So are his limbs. But he can feel all his fingers and toes, so that’s something. Two separate IVs snaking cold into his arm, cannula stopping his nose and feeding him too-dry air. No tube down his throat. Hurts to swallow, though, so that might be recent news.

He needs to move. Get out of this bed just to prove he can. Can’t afford to be trapped here. Plus, he needs to. . .to. . .he can’t remember. Just the feeling of urgency. He was supposed to. . .do something. . .damn it, what?

The Number? There must have been a Number, but all he can dredge up are vague flashes of a gunfight in the dark, Fusco yelling, Harold’s worried voice in his ear and himself hissing, _Busy, Harold. . ._

_Harold._

His heart lurches in panic, but no, Harold was safe in the Subway, he was talking on the comm, worried for John, not in danger himself.

_Fusco?_

_Harold?_

“’Morning, Sunshine.” Fusco’s round face pokes through the curtain, interrupting John’s brain-grinding. He stumps in, whole and healthy and cheerful, relieving the worst of John’s anxiety but not banishing it completely. “They told me you was doing better. Decided you might as well live after all, huh?”

John tries to summon up a reply, but it’s all he can do to grunt acknowledgement and twitch his mouth to approximate a smile. That seems to please Fusco, though, who grins and squeezes John’s shoulder with surprising delicacy.

“Glad to see you’re awake. You scared the crap out of everyone, you know?” He gives _everyone_ just the faintest emphasis.

 _Harold,_ John thinks, though he’s got just enough marbles not to say the name aloud. There was something important he needed to tell Harold. What the hell was it?

“Listen, they’re gonna wanna bust in here and check you over in a sec, I can’t stay. Just figured you’d rest easier if you saw a friendly face, know there’s someone watching out for you, huh?”

He raps his knuckles casually on one of the monitors near John’s bed with a wink. John can’t see any tell-tales from here, but Harold’s good at bugs.

He manages another grunt and Fusco nods.

“You take care of yourself now, okay?”

Fusco leaves, replaced by a woman in scrubs who examines John while he stares at the blinking lights of the monitor, trying and failing to remember what the hell he has to tell Harold.

 

                        *                                  *                                  *

 

It’s Fusco who springs John from the hospital two weeks later. John insists he’s in good enough shape to walk, but Fusco just snorts and says, “You really wanna fight me on this one?” and no, John doesn’t want to. So he lets Fusco wheel him out to the parking lot and load both him and the wheelchair into the car.

“Where to?” Fusco asks once he’s gotten John settled. And there’s security, but then there’s paranoia, and Fusco has damn well earned a bone of trust from John by now. The apartment’s just a place for Riley to call home, anyway. So John gives him the address and lets Fusco drive him home.

Fusco takes him up the elevator and rolls him to his door, but lets him put the key in the lock himself.

“I’ll stop by for tea and cookies another time. You don’t need me to brush your teeth for you or anything,” Fusco adds in a tone that makes it not quite a question.

“Nah, I’m good,” John replies. And then, because it occurs to him he hasn’t said it yet, “Thanks, Lionel.”

Fusco pats him on the shoulder, splitting the difference between hearty and gentle.

“No sweat, pal,” he says. “Just try not to make it a habit, huh?” Then he steps back into the elevator and the doors shut behind him.

The moment John rolls the chair through the apartment door, Bear charges him, butting his head against John’s knees, licking his hands and anything else in reach, tail lashing. John pats his back and tugs his ears and tries to smell reassuring, but Bear is in no mood to calm down.

“Bear, that’s enough. _Af. Hier_ ,” says Harold.

He’s standing by one of John’s armchairs; he must have risen when he heard the door. He’s as dapper as ever, in dove grey with a lavender tie and pocket square. He looks exhausted and old, but his eyes are bright.

“Harold,” John says, for the first time in weeks. He sounds like he’s chain-smoked three packs of cigarettes.

“Welcome home,” says Harold quietly, as the dog reluctantly settles at his feet. “I—perhaps I shouldn’t have intruded, but I—that is—”

“Don’t worry about it."

John doesn’t mind that Harold let himself in without asking. It’s not like any privacy from Harold has ever been more than a courtesy. Besides, he’s glad to see Harold. But seeing him brings back the vague urgency that’s been nagging John on and off since he woke up in the hospital. That sense of having forgotten something important.

“I’m glad to see you, well, perhaps not on your feet yet, but. . .” Harold gestures vaguely. He sounds almost apologetic. “We really feared we’d lost you, this time.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too. Glad we were all wrong.” John smiles, and Harold breaks into his real, unselfconscious smile, the one that hardly ever makes an appearance.

“Can I—is there anything you need?”

He needs to lie down, take a piss, take a shower. He needs to be strong enough to walk more than a couple of steps on his own. He needs for the screaming fire in his guts to go away, which it will, but not nearly fast enough. He probably needs to take a painkiller, although he doesn’t want to, and he definitely needs to take his antibiotics. Most of what he needs, either he can handle on his own, or nobody, including Harold, can make it happen.

But, damn it. . .

“There was something. . .” He frowns, trying to remember. “Something I was supposed to tell you.”

“Yes?”

“Fusco said. . .Fusco wanted me to tell you. . .” But no, that’s not right. Is it? Even though he’s almost sure he remembers Fusco telling him. . .telling him to. . .

“Detective Fusco?” Harold asks dubiously. “Why wouldn’t he just tell me himself?”

“Because I thought I was dying,” John says, and he doesn’t need Harold’s frown to tell him that that made no sense at all. It’s true, though, which— “Oh. No. _I_ told _him_ to tell you. . .”

“Because you thought you were dying,” Harold echoes, slowly.

“Yeah.”

And now that he says it that way, John still can’t actually remember what he was thinking at that moment, but he can guess the gist. Only now he isn’t dying after all, and Harold’s looking at him expectantly, and Harold is often oblivious but never, ever dumb.

His defensive instincts kick into gear, urging him to damage control, to deflect, to deny, anything to protect the secret he’s been guarding. But bizarrely, although the anxiety of not being able to remember is resolved, the need to _tell Harold_ is more urgent than ever. Paralyzed by conflicting imperatives, John stares silently up at Harold’s face, watching its expression drift from curiosity to hope to disappointment to the stiff façade that doesn’t conceal Harold’s emotions nearly as well as Harold thinks it does.

 _Don’t,_ he wants to say, or _Harold,_ or _Please._

But he doesn’t, until eventually, Harold says quietly, “You know, if you have to be dead in order to tell me. . .whatever it is. . .I’m in no great hurry to find out. In fact, I hope and trust that the wait will be a long one.”

He’s letting John off the hook, but John doesn’t _want_ off the hook, damn it all. He wants. . .he wants. . .but he still can’t force the fucking words out of his mouth.

Instead, he manages to ask, “Give me a hand to the bedroom? I don’t think the chair’ll make it through the door.”

It’s not much of a bone, but it’s the best he can do, and Harold accepts it graciously.

“Of course,” he says, walking behind John to take hold of the wheelchair.

He wheels John to the bedroom door, which, in fact, the chair does not fit through. The bed’s close enough that John could make it by himself, but he leans on Harold’s shoulder to lever himself to his feet, and lets Harold take some of his weight as they totter to the bed together.

Harold eases him down and then hovers, fussing with pillows and blankets, while John thinks about bleeding out on cold pavement. Thinks about Fusco, a dependable working partner and a decent friend, better company than John would have expected to die in, certainly better than he deserves. Pictures Fusco stumping down the stairs into the hidden Subway—sliding into a diner booth—standing on a sidewalk with blood on his hands and blue lights flashing across his face as Harold limps up to him. Fusco’s rough, anxious sympathy as he delivers his fucking message, and Harold—John can’t imagine what Harold does, what he looks like, he _won’t_ imagine that, because it’s not—that can’t—

As Harold lowers himself carefully to his knees to remove John’s loafers, John manages to rasp out, “What if?”

Harold raises his eyes to John’s face. Startled. Patient. Careful. His two hands still cradling John’s shoe.

“What if?” he asks.

John clears his throat. Swallows. Sucks in air.

“What if I don’t. Want you to wait. That long.”

“Well,” says Harold. He drops his eyes, as though that could hide the smile taking over his face. Sets the shoe carefully to one side. Takes up John’s other foot. “Then I’ll be happy to discuss it at your convenience.”


End file.
